Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/226

 peculiarity was that it only strengthened with life, and, which is rarer, always retained some of the childish colouring.

A common test—for it is surely not the essence—of genius is the proverbial capacity for taking pains. Stevenson again illustrates the meaning of the remark. Nothing is easier, says a recent German philosopher, than to give a receipt for making yourself a good novelist. Write a hundred drafts, none of them above two pages long: let each be so expressed that every word is necessary: practise putting anecdotes into the most pregnant and effective shapes; and after ten years devoted to these and various subsidiary studies, you will have completed your apprenticeship. Few novelists, I suppose, carry out this scheme to the letter; but Stevenson might have approved the spirit of the advice. Nobody would adopt it unless he had the passion for the art, which is a presumption of genius, and, without genius, the labour would be wasted. That, indeed, raises one of those points which are so delightful to discuss because they admit of no precise solution. When people ask whether 'form' or 'content,' style or matter, be the most important, it is like asking whether order or progress should be the aim of a